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Episode #587 - Retirement Basics - Building Energy

“Don't just do something. Stand there!”

-Martin Gavel

Roger: Welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence because you're doing the work to really lean in and rock it. It's all about creating a great life. That's what this is about. That's what retirement planning is about.

Today on the show, I have some comments and thoughts about all of the messages we're getting during these turbulent times in the market and whether they're really helpful or not. Second, our main segment is going to be about building energy, the basics of building energy so you can actually show up for your retirement, not just now, but when you're 75 or 85. Coach in the Rock Retirement Club, Dr. Bobby Dubois and I are going to chat about some specific things that you can start doing today to help that journey of building energy.

In addition to that, we have a great rocking retirement in the wild story. Someone taking action on, creating a great plan. Wow, I have a whistle in my nose. Can you hear that? My wife teases me about that all the time. let's see. Nope, whistle's gone. Okay, that's what we're going to do today.

Before we get to my comments on all the messaging in the markets, I wanted to take a quick moment and celebrate. I want to celebrate Erin Koh, who is on our team. She passed the CFP® a while ago and she just got her experience requirements. So she is official. She's bona fide certified financial planner. Congratulations, Erin! Troy on our team. Awesome guy. Had a hole in one last weekend and he won't stop talking about it. He just keeps talking about it. Actually, he doesn't, but I tease him about it. He got one. Congratulations, Troy!

With that said, let's talk about some of the messaging we're getting during these turbulent times, and then we'll move on to Dr. Bobby.

I've been a little annoyed lately with a lot of the messaging that we're getting on social media, on financial news, by advisors, which are essentially, let me give you a ton of perspective and information about when markets go down, what happens. This is what it looked like back in the past. Trust us, we're really smart. You're going to be okay. Just trust us and you'll be fine. Just don't do anything or take a breath, Go for a walk. Don't look at this stuff. You'll be fine. It seems like we're getting inundated with perspective and challenges. To just do nothing, just stand. You'll be fine. Don't worry. I think that these are not very smart strategies when we're under stress and when we're feeling like we're being acted upon. This is definitely a move that financial advisors and planners make because we think in the long term. Yeah, let's just relax. You have a great plan. Don't worry. We put this together. Look at all my initials. We're really smart. You'll be fine. That does not breed confidence, in my opinion.

When we are under stress and if you're retired, especially, but even normal folk when you're losing money, when you log into an account, wherever it's at, usually on your dashboard, it literally calculates how much money you've lost today or from today versus yesterday in dollar terms. That's the framing that you get. How the heck are we just supposed to trust someone or just take a breath? It's okay when we see money being lost on paper because markets are going down. That does not breed confidence. Essentially, it's just grit your teeth and bear it. Now, I'm not saying that you need to do a lot of things. That's not my argument here. But I get annoyed by those messages because I don't think they're very helpful to someone that's actually going through this in real time. Here's what I would suggest that you do. I do suggest that you do something. Don't just trust anybody. Don't just grin and bear it.

Here's what I think you should do. Number one, acknowledge the stress and name it. This is really scary. Markets are really volatile and they're. Are they crashing? I don't know what the heck is happening with tariffs. Is this what it's going to be like for the next four years? It's okay to acknowledge all this stuff and to name it. I'm really worried about all this stuff because I don't know what's going on and it doesn't seem like anybody else does. It's okay to acknowledge all that. Take two, three minutes and just bathe in that, because it's real.

Step two, reaffirm. Okay, yeah, this stuff is really crazy. But let me take stock of all I got. These are the resources I have. I have a great family. I have my health at whatever level it is. I’m paying attention. That's a really good thing. A lot of people aren't. Reaffirm all the positive stuff and get to a point where you can say okay, yeah, this is going to be hard, but I got this. I can figure this out. I feel good. Get to that point. You have to. As bad as it is, you always have something that you can do.

Step three. I do think you need to do something if you are under stress, you have to do something that gets you off of your heels, where you feel like, wow, everything's just being acted upon. Me just beating me up and everybody's just telling me, grin and take it. No, you should be doing something. Get on your toes. What I suggest that you do is revisit your plan from the beginning to remind yourself of the details and what you've built. Walk through your plan of record to remind yourself, these are the goals that we have. Here are the resources we have right now. Here is the feasibility of that plan. Here's specifically how I'm going to pay my paycheck over the next year, 2, 3, or 4. Specifically. The more specific, the better your understanding is. You can rebuild the story of what you've created in your plan of record. That will help you breathe a little bit to see what is created. It's not going to fully take away the stress. Wow, yeah. I see when I log in that I lost this much money today, but when I pull back and I see, well, yeah, but all the money that I need for my paycheck for the next year, two, three, or four, whatever it is, that money is not losing money because I built out my income floor and I'm paying myself. So that is an action of reminding yourself, oh, yeah, I'm okay, I did this work. This is why I did all this work. Then you can celebrate that. You can also maybe identify some areas where your plan might be a little bit inadequate. That's normal. All of our plans are inadequate. But now you can identify that and maybe create a baby step to, well, let me just fix this one thing. I said I was going to do this and I didn't do it. Let me navigate that now. Now you have a little baby project that you're working on.

When you are doing something that puts you on your toes, that gives you agency, which gives you at least a sense of control that you're acting on your own behalf. Now, if you do this third step and you're like, well, I don't really have a plan, or I don't have a plan that's detailed enough either, because you hadn't got to the point of doing the work or the advisor you're working with has a plan, but it's short on details and specifics. Now is a good time to really acknowledge that or discover that in order to figure out, okay, well, what little baby step can I do to get to more specifics so it's not just smoke and mirrors. Now's not a bad time to find that out. earlier the better. If you're working with a planner or you're doing your planning and you realize, oh, I was really good on the vision and the feasible part, but I never got into making it resilient in the specifics and. Or when I ask my advisor specifically, well, how am I going to make my paycheck for my life next year or the year after if this market continues? Specifically, because there may be answers. But if it's not specific, it's not going to give you much confidence. So, now's a good time to do that. When's the best time to plant a tree? Today? Well, what, 30 years ago or before retirement? But when's the next time to build a plan of record? Today.

My point is, I get a little frustrated when I hear all this. Just trust us. take a breath. Here's all this data on, perspective. That's great, but I have to swim. I have to have confidence. I don't want to just grin and bear it. And I don't think you should either. So that's my current comments on navigating this is go through this process. Yes. This sucks. Acknowledge that, name it, talk about it. Reaffirm all the good that you have in your life and then revisit your plan in detail so you can rebuild the story. The campfire of confidence, I call it. We have to get that thing kindled up.

All right, with that said, let's move on to building the basics of energy so we can have the energy to deal with all this stress.

PRACTICAL PLANNING WITH DR. BOBBY

Today's practical planning is focused on building energy so you can show up for your retirement. Like most things, if you can consistently do the basics, you're going to get a lot of the juice from the orange, even if you decide not to optimize. We want to focus on the basics to building energy. To help me do that, as always, is Dr. Bobby Dubois. Bobby, how are you doing?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: I'm doing great.

Roger: Good. So, we're going to focus on just the basics and some actionable things that people can do today. We're going to have links to your podcast for specific Episodes. We'll put those in The Noodle just so everybody knows. You have a podcast that focuses on building energy and having a great retirement. So, what's going on in your podcast right now?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, it's called Live Long and well with Dr. Bobby. Just put in Dr. Bobby, you'll find me. I was trying to come up with a name for a segment of my podcast. So, I of course used ChatGPT and one of the names of the segment, which I don't think I'll use for the segment of it, but, but I really liked it. It was the Open Minded Skeptic. I think that's kind of me. I'm open minded. If there's new evidence that says, oh, this is wonderful, or this is not wonderful, but I go into things like, okay, go ahead and convince me that whatever it is, red light therapy, seed oils, you name it, you know, is there evidence to really either be excited about it and on a positive way or, or frightened of it in a negative way?

Roger: That's a great example of continuing to be curious and questioning your assumptions so you can dig deeper on things. So, I love it.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Absolutely.

To rock retirement you need the financial wherewithal to do it

Roger: So where do we want to start on the basics of building energy?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: I think there are two things. The first is sort of the three legged stool that we talked about maybe two years ago that to rock retirement you need the financial wherewithal to do it. Of course you have to have a purpose, you have to have a reason to wake up in the morning and be excited about your life. But the whole thing falls apart if you don't have your health. So, if one of those legs of the stool, which is health and energy, isn't there, retirement is going to be very, very hard to rock. Now people might say, oh, well, Dr. Bobby, oh, what am I supposed to do about it? Well, it's kind of like thinking about retirement and waiting until you're 63 to say, you know, maybe I should have been saving money. And people are like, well, yeah, yeah, you probably should have started when you were 25 or 30. The same thing is true for health. It's never too late to start. But you really, really, really want to start as early as you can, because unlike your financial nest egg, which will, you know, tend to rise over time, your health tends to go in the opposite direction. So, you want to kind of get ahead of it. So that's what folks can begin to think about. Then of course, we'll get into some specific areas.

Roger: The power of compounding is essentially what we're talking about here. Little consistent habits compound over time. One thing I think about Bobby is my son Spencer, who is now in the ER, but in the ICU, for a while. He sees in the ICU many times the result of compounding of bad behaviors or habits. These things happen, like you go broke very slowly and then very quickly. I think in terms of health, it's probably very similar with the areas that we have some control over.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: I think it's absolutely true. I mean, as you get beyond age 30, you're going to lose 1 to 2% of your muscle mass every year. So do the math over a couple of decades, and that's a significant amount. Then we, as we get older, lose bone mass. The density of our bones gets less and they become more brittle, more difficult for women because they go through estrogen changes with menopause, but men too. What we really ideally want to do is to strengthen our bones before they start, deteriorate and have as much know strength as we have and can, so that when we inevitably lose some muscle, we're in a better place than we otherwise might have been.

Roger: Now we're going to go through the basics. And you gave me a brief outline, and I appreciate your, your ability to go to the basics because I know you can go deep down the rabbit hole because you're a scientist, which is awesome.

Weight is connected with a lot of other things that can go wrong

But before we get to the basics, I want to actually go first to a thread that I pulled out from interacting with you over the last. It's been two, three years now. It's been a long time.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: It is indeed.

Roger: One of the threads that stuck with me was the importance of weight and all the things that can go bad if you don't maintain a good weight for your particular body. It seems that's a common thread of a lot of different things that can go wrong.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Absolutely. I mean, we can take it from the simple orthopedic. If you're carrying around extra weight, 20, 30, 40 pounds for 50 years or 30 years, it's going to take a toll on your joints. We've all seen plenty of older people. They're just shuffling along. It's hard for them because they're in pain. So, weight definitely has an impact over those years. But it also affects the likelihood of getting heart disease, of getting stroke, cognitive decline, which we all fear. Cancer, diabetes. All of these things are made worse if you're overweight. Look, if you're five or seven pounds overweight, that's a non-issue. It's when you're 20, 30, 50 pounds overweight that, if you're 30 years old and you're quite overweight, you'll probably get away with it. As you get older, these types of things will catch up with you. Of course, you know, there are things that folks can do to try to focus on their weight, and it's the obvious stuff like portion control. In the end, I do believe what you eat matters, but basically, it's how many calories go in and how many calories you're burning and lots more detail. We can go down the rabbit hole.

One thing I would like to at least put out there, I've changed my attitude a lot towards the weight loss drugs, the Ozempics and Mounjaros and the other ones. You know, I was initially rather uncertain about who should consider them. but they have been so powerful and so helpful that I would have folks talk to your doctor. If you've been struggling with 30, 40, 50 pounds of being overweight and you really can't get it under control, these can make a huge difference. It's worth at least considering it.

Roger: Yeah, there's a lot of physiological things that go on, but weight is connected with a lot of other things which, and we'll absolutely link to some podcasts, but we all have agency of what I can do now, given wherever we're at to build energy?

So, let's start with a few basic things that we can be aware of, that we can start taking action on literally today. So, like, what's the first one?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: The unsung hero that is starting to get more attention, but for years people haven’t really focused on it, is sleep.

Ideally, we want to get seven to eight hours, and 50% of the US population gets less than seven hours, and plenty of people get less than six hours. Lots of people are like, well, I only get six hours during the week, but on the weekends, I get lots more sleep. Unfortunately, you can't make up lost sleep. Now, some people are just unlucky and genetically they just can't sleep well. But for most people, there are simple things that you can do to make a huge difference. I'll just rattle off a few. Again, my podcast has lots more if you want to go to the sleep episode. But there are basically 12 things. I'll just give you a few.

One thing that people don't think about is a cold bedroom under 70 at night helps a lot. Now, don't undo the cold bedroom by putting seven blankets on your bed. You actually want to go to bed where it kind of feels a little chilly. If your feet are cold, fine, put on some socks, but you don't want to bundle underneath the blankets because you actually won't sleep as well. So low bedroom temperature, not too many blankets would be one second. If you enjoy alcohol, it will mess with your sleep. You may think it doesn't, but it really does. If you happen to have one of the sleep trackers, your Apple watch or a ring or Fitbit or something, you'll notice that. Try to minimize alcohol. Try to have it as many hours before bed as possible so as much of it wears off as possible. Also, don't eat right before bed. That's also something. Some people think caffeine is really important to their sleep, so maybe stopping any coffee or caffeine after 10 or 11 in the morning, those are some simple, easy things. You can get started today and try to experiment, try one technique and say, oh, that really helped or it didn't help and then move on to the next technique. Most people can find a regimen that works for them.

Roger: I'm doing an experiment related to this right now in that we just had some friends leave after a five day visit and I drank all five days and now I'm by myself in the house and I'm not going to drink for two weeks and compare the data just to see. But it's that n of one experiment that we've talked about on episodes on your podcast and ours.

When it comes to drinking or eating, is there a default number of hours prior to going to bed that someone could use or is it more situational?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: It's a really great question and I would have, I. I'm old enough to remember, not that I ever did it, the two martini lunch. You know, in the 60s and 70s that was like what people did, they would go out to lunch, a business lunch, and they'd have, you know, the figurative two martini lunches. Somehow, I thought, you know, that's actually a really good idea. Rather than having alcohol for dinner, you should back it up and have it for lunch, especially on the weekends. Then by the time you get to bedtime, it will have burned out of your system and it won't affect your sleep. Unfortunately, there was this really interesting study where people had alcohol earlier and they did a little breathalyzer test like those things that you put in your car if you want to make sure you are not drinking and driving. So, people's breath alcohol was zero. But then when they looked at their sleep impact on a sleep study, it actually still affected your deep sleep and all the different stages of sleep. So, yes, as early in the day as, far away from sleep as possible is best, but it still can affect you. The food is probably not as problematic. Meaning, I think if you gave yourself three hours between eating and sleeping, you're probably going to be fine. It'll probably be out of your stomach, and your body will be ready to go to sleep.

Roger: Okay, so sleep is number one. What's number two?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, exercise.

Exercise is so important, and most people realize that they're supposed to get a couple of hours a week of aerobic exercise. But as we age, it's really important not to stop there. Oh, Dr. Bobby. I go for a wonderful walk with my dog, and I actually do get my heart rate up. Is that enough? It's a great start. But strength training is really important.

As I mentioned earlier, we lose muscle as we age. So, if you want to be able to go traveling and take your roller and put it up over the bins above your seats, and it's 20 pounds, you need to be able to do 30, 40 pounds or more when you're 40 or 50, because, again, you're going to lose some of that mass. So, try to get to the gym.

If you can afford it, having a trainer makes all the difference. I hate doing strength training, but I have a trainer that arrives every Tuesday morning for Gail and me, and that's the backbone of our strength training. Balance is really important. So, whether it's a wobble board or a Bosu thing, or you just stand like a stork with one leg up in the air or a flamingo, work on your balance. Those are all things you can do. I like to raise up one of my legs when I'm brushing my teeth. You know, I brush my teeth, it takes two minutes. One leg is up, then I do the other leg, and that part of my balance work is done.

Roger: Let's take each one of these in turn.

Let's talk about cardio. The most approachable way is ingrained in us, 10,000 steps a day. Now, we, I think we've had discussions. is it really 10,000? Is it more like 7 or 5? But is that enough? Cardio from a heart perspective is just walking.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, there's a couple of things. One is the guidelines, and the national guidelines are 150 to 300 minutes per week, which is, you know, two and a half to five hours of what they call moderate to vigorous activity a week. So, it's 30 minutes a day kind of thing.

Now, here's the caveat. Look, I want people to do anything. If walking around your house is all you can do, then walk around your house. But ideally, the aerobic exercise you want to do has your heart rate up a certain amount. Now, you can have a heart rate monitor and you can measure it. There are ways to target 60 to 70% of your maximum heart rate. What's called zone two. But what I like to say to people are if you're able to carry on a conversation as relaxed as you and I are, Roger, then you're not moving fast enough. If you can't get a word out because you're huffing and puffing, then you're working too hard at that aerobic work. What you should be able to do is speak a sentence or two and then pause, take a breath for a sentence. So, it's like, yes, you should be able to keep exercising for a little while longer. Now I can continue to talk some more, but if I, if I can't even get that sentence out, then I have to go slower. But oftentimes, if people are strolling, they may not be getting their heart rate up high enough. The very simple talk test is a wonderful way to do it. You don't need a heart rate monitor. I basically just sum it up as you can say two sentences and then you breathe for a sentence and that's about your zone two. That would be delightful if you could do it.

Roger: I love that self-test. I think of walking as like a gateway drug. When you're walking, generally you're going out outside. I love the conversation test as too slow or too fast. But when you're outside, it's a gateway drug to exploration, to meeting people, to exploring new places. But I think that's a great basic structure for basic cardio.

Let's go to strength. For someone that isn't a gym rat or doesn't think about strength. I think of people when they start, strength training. Really, I'm thinking of myself and friends. I know they get very excited about it. They either go to the gym and they do a circuit on the machines, or they do weights and then they come home. Usually, it's the bicep and they can't really lift their arm because they went a little too hard too quickly. What are the basics? Should people just go do machines? Should they do one or two pushups every day or what? What is a basic starting point for that?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, I mentioned earlier, if you have the ability to go to a gym and have a trainer, it's a wonderful way to get started. You don't have to necessarily be with a trainer forever, but it's a good way to get a basic regimen going. In most gyms, they will even give you a free one. Weights using machines is wonderful and for a lot of people that's the best they can do. Obviously, there's biceps and triceps machines and ab machines and leg push and pull machines so you can work your way around and get most parts of your body. There is a beauty though of free weights or doing things with your body because in a machine you're isolating that muscle. When you're using a weight and you're squatting down and lifting it up or you're raising it above your hand, even if it's lightweight, your whole core has to be engaged. So, most people do like to get somebody to show them how to do some of those free weights. But at home you can do pushups, you can do planks, which is basically a push up where you're not going up and down, you're just holding yourself in position. You can do planks facing down, you can plank on your side. Those are wonderful. You could do a little bit of stomach work; you can do burpees. If you want to get your heart rate up, you jump up and down and then do a push up and then jump up and down again. So, there's lots of different things. People sort of say you should do something where you're pushing, like a push up, something like pulling so you can try to do a pull up or something where you're pulling things towards you. Squats are wonderful. You don't have to have weights even, you can just do it while you're brushing your teeth. There's a theme here. Don't waste those precious minutes while you're brushing teeth. Do something else. You could do squatting exercises and we already talked about the one legged kinds of things. That's a basic, simple regimen that folks can do. If you can do it once a week, it will be wonderful. If you can do it twice a week. Great. There's no need for most people to do it more than twice a week.

Roger: Okay. There are great online apps on phones, many, of them free, some of them subscription, that have basic programs. I can attest that body weight is very powerful because you can start where you're at, even if you can't do, you know, air squats, which are great. You could just literally sit in a chair, stand up, sit in the chair again, stand up. I mean, it can be as basic as that at the beginning.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Absolutely. There is wonderful stuff for free on YouTube or elsewhere. We have a peloton bike, but they have all sorts of strength classes and other things that you get, you know, for the same monthly fee. People love doing them. There's music. It's motivating. So, yes, that's a great way to get yourself to do stuff.

You talked about balance for a second. But what do we mean by balance

Roger: So now, the third leg of this, this movement standpoint, we talked. You talked about balance for a second. I think this relates to using a machine versus body weight or free weights, because when you're not isolated, you have to use a lot of little micro muscles to help you around. But what do you mean by balance? How do we do that? Why is it important? How do we do that?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: So, balance in its simplistic form is, you know, preferably you would like not to fall. and as we get older, not only does it get easier to fall just because all sorts of things start to wear out in our bodies, but if we do fall, we're much more likely to hurt ourselves because our bones are getting more brittle. My podcast that's coming up this next week is talking about basically getting ahead of the curve. Its title is the more you have, the more you have to lose. Kind of like money. The more you have, the more you have to lose. But also in. In strength training and, and such.

I chat with a, a woman named Karen who couldn't work out and couldn't do much for a couple months. She was traveling, she was sick, and then she went to the market and brought groceries back, where she would always be able to grab three or four bags in each hand, put them up on the kitchen counter, and then put stuff away. She came home and she couldn't lift them up to more than 10 degrees. She couldn't lift up the bags onto her kitchen counter. This was terribly upsetting to her. She didn't realize how much she had lost until she tested it with the groceries. Now, why am I saying this? You don't know that your muscles and your balance have gotten weaker and worse until you actually get into that situation and you really don't want to fall. I invariably am somebody who trips on sidewalks. It's like I can't even find where the crack is, but I will trip. If I wasn't able to get myself to move my legs quickly to prevent the fall, I'd be down on the ground. Balance is something you kind of got to keep paying attention to. Try standing on one leg. See how hard is it for you? Stand on one leg and close your eyes. Please do that with your hand next to a wall. I don't want you falling.

Roger: It is much harder. It is much harder.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: It's much harder. What's important is you realize, oh my goodness, I didn't realize my balance was getting worse. It's a wakeup call. There's also the Brazilian sit stand thing. You can YouTube this thing or Google it. It's a test where you get five points by sitting down. Five points for standing up onto the ground. It gives you a reference for what your balance is like. Can you get up and get down on the ground without using your knees or your hands? and if you need to use knees and hands, then you subtract a point. But that will also be a wakeup call for people to say, oh my goodness, I didn't realize I need to work on some of this stuff.

Roger: I currently cannot do that.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, you can do it.

Roger: Yeah, I'm subtracting points. That's what I mean. I can't do it perfectly.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Most people can’t. In fact, to be in the top echelon, all it takes is seven points. You do not have to get a perfect score to be in the top fitness area for longevity.

Roger: Those are simple things. Stand on one leg, holding on to something. Close your eyes, try. It's just awareness and then taking baby steps to improve it. Because we're all wherever we're at, and that's the key here.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Absolutely.

Roger: So we went, we covered sleep, we covered movement. What else?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, we talked earlier about weight and how important it is from a health and longevity standpoint to have our weight at a pretty optimal level for us. People say, Dr. Bobby, well, what's the right weight? Most of us know it. You know, back in college we were trim and you may not get back to that exact level, but that's kind of the ballpark. Here are the two simplest but most effective tricks that seem to help people a lot.

The first is our grandparents dishes were half the size of our dishes. So, our salad plate is about the size of our grandparents dinner plate. One recommendation is using your salad plate as your main plate. It will automatically reduce your portion size and your calorie intake and get you perhaps closer to where you need to be. So that's a simple hack. Now in conjunction with the second one, it's even more powerful. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to realize you've eaten a meal. What often happens is that in 20 minutes we've eaten a lot more than we think we need to, and then the 20 minutes hits and they were like, oh, maybe I ate too much.

This is what I recommend. Use the salad plate, take ultimately what is about half of what you would normally eat, put it on your salad plate and then go and eat that meal and then get up and walk around a little bit and allow 20 or 30 minutes to pass from the time you started eating to that point in time. Then go back to your salad plate and if you're still hungry, by all means have another bit of food. But what most people find is they took half of what they thought they were going to eat by waiting that time. They come back and they're like, you know, I'm not really hungry anymore. Those are two very simple things that can really help for a lot of folks.

Roger: I love that it's focused on portion size rather than going down, the calorie counting and the types of foods because at a very basic, like you said, it's calories in, calories out.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: It really is. Now I have a more nuanced view of this. A lot of people are against ultra processed foods nowadays and I too have problems with them. I did a whole podcast on them. But the issue with ultra processed foods isn't so much that there's evil chemicals inside because a lot of them really aren't like that, but what they are is they are very calorie dense. So, for every bite you chew, you might get 50 calories instead of 20 calories. You can very easily eat a lot.

The other thing about ultra processed foods is they're designed to be irresistible because they have a combination of fat, salt, carbs or sugar in them. You know, the old Doritos commercial or Lay's commercial, I bet you can't eat just one. Yes, that's exactly right. It's very hard. The ultra processed foods are not necessarily evil per se, but they tend to make you overeat because we like to chew and we eat more of that and they are just too darn delicious.

Roger: That's a great point. I mean there's many foods scientifically designed for that purpose.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: I mean even a protein bar. Go and look at the ingredients of a protein bar. Now if it's a meat stick, okay, maybe there aren't as many bad things in it, but if you just look at your basic protein bar and it's like, oh, there's salt in here, oh there's carbs in here. That's why I love them like it's a brownie because they make it taste like a brownie. But of course, it says healthy on the cover.

Roger: These are the basics. Now you may be far advanced, but honestly these are the building blocks. Whether it's movement, sleep or eating, this is where to start. If you're advanced, you're just going to go a lot deeper down the optimization path. But if you're not advanced in this, these are the basics that you can start doing today. Bobby is kind enough to share the links to specific episodes that touch on each one of these topics and we're going to share those in our weekly email, The Noodle. So, you can go directly to his podcast, Live long and well with Dr. Bobby to those specific episodes.

In addition to that, I suggest that you check out his podcast because he knows what he's talking about and he's a good guy.

Second, we're going to share in The Noodle a book summary of Tiny Habits, which is related to how to start building different habits or how to take away different habits in a very simple, easy to execute format. Are you familiar with the book Bobby?

Dr. Bobby Dubois: I am familiar with it. I have not read it but lots of people have told me some of the key elements so I kind like I know what's in it.

Roger: Yeah, like a good example is that he uses in the book and I'm sure you can find it. I think he did a ted talk. BJ Fog is his name. He did an experiment. Anytime he goes to the bathroom, he does a push up, not in the bathroom I assume, but he does a push up. You have a trigger of something that you do all the time anyway and then you just add the habit to that and then you celebrate. As simple as I go to the bathroom, I do one push up. Very simple things.

Another example, Bobby, is to have your clothes set out the night before you go to the gym. Or make it, I go to the gym and you just agree that I'll just walk into the gym. Don't even set the bar too high. Just walk into the gym and by setting the bar low, it allows you to start, it doesn't intimidate you. Then once you're there, you're probably going to do one thing. If you're going to do one pushup, you may do two. that's basically the concept.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: Sounds great. Cool. It makes perfect sense.

Roger: All right, well, we're going to share your episodes on the show. Thanks so much for helping focus on the basics of building energy so we can rock retirement, buddy.

Dr. Bobby Dubois: My great pleasure as always. Thank you.

ROCKIN’ RETIREMENT IN THE WILD

Roger: Now it's time to check in with someone like you out in the wild. Rocking retirement. We're going to do this with someone who is anonymous. They gave me permission to share their comments, but they wanted to stay anonymous. I'm just going to read what they have to say.

“Hey Roger, thank you for the podcast.

While I don't really fit your normal cohort, I only have approximately $750,000 in IRA funds, I have found your topics interesting and helpful. I retired four years ago from a private high school. Originally, I intended to retire at age 70, but as you often point out, retirement comes sooner than we expect sometimes. That was true for me as I was fatigued and provincially retired at age 66, so four years earlier than expected. My wife was subsequently diagnosed with ovarian cancer, so retiring enabled me to devote the time needed for her care. I had looked at my retirement income and thought it would cover the bills and it has. I have a military pension and Social Security with my wife. This covers our base great life and charities, along with trips to see the grandchildren.

Using your suggestions, I have my own spreadsheet for the next five years and have confidence my wife and I will be fine. Keep up the great work you do. It helps those of us who don't necessarily have 2 million in pretax and 1 1/2 million in post-tax to draw from. I recommend your podcast and encourage joining the Rock Retirement Club to those near retirement. I don't think the club fits me in my present situation, but I will keep listening.

Again, thank you for the Words of wisdom on your podcast.”

You don't have to be rich to create a great retirement. You can do the work and that is part of retirement planning. Assembly is required. Work is required. I want to congratulate you on navigating this. What a blessing that you were able to be available to spend time with your wife while she's going through this cancer treatment. I hope that you and she are well and congratulations on rocking your life, buddy.

RETIREMENT ANSWER MAN LISTENER SURVEY

Now we are talking about the Retirement Answer Man listener survey. This is a survey that many of you have completed. We've done this for years now and we're going to share an infographic of you and your cohort listening to this show so you can get an idea of who is listening and who is responding to our survey. That's where we get a lot of ideas of how to improve the show, how to get better, what to add, what to delete. We'll have an infographic in our weekly Noodle newsletter. By the way, if you're not receiving that newsletter, go to thenoodle.me and sign up. It's a great way to get a quick dose of wisdom and summary of the show on Saturday. Plus, we share exclusive resources and training on how to rock retirement. So let me go through just a couple of things and then you'll see the graphics in this week's Noodle.

Alright, let's see. We have about 43% of listeners that are totally retired. 10% are what they call pre-tired, which means they left their full time career but they're working part time doing something.

47% of the people that listen have advisors, which I find very interesting. That has been increasing over the years and I think that's actually a really good thing because if you're working with an advisor and you're paying your fee, which is totally reasonable as long as you're getting value and this is going to make you a much better client to hold them to a higher standard so you can collaborate with them. I think that's awesome.

We have 63% of the audience is male. So, the female contingent has been increasing consistently over the years. That's another thing that I've seen.

What is your number one concern about retirement? By far it is money, money, money, money, money, two is health, and three is finding purpose and meaning.

About 73% of you do not plan on working in retirement and there's some other things that we'll share some fun things about. where do you want to head to first? We have cruises in Switzerland and Mexico and Florida and Africa. A lot of cool things. We'll share this in The Noodle. This is probably about the 10th year of our survey. I so feel honored to hang out with you. You've really had an impact on my life. Just from a spirit standpoint, I appreciate that and hopefully this has been a good journey for you too.

Now we can go set that smart sprint.

TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT

On your marks, get set, and we're off to set a baby step we can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life.

All right. We have two options here for the next seven days.

Number one is we can take action like I discussed around our stress.

Or number two, we can pick one of Dr. Bobby's suggestions to take action on. From building energy standpoint, what should we choose?

Let me think about this. Well, obviously you can choose whatever resonates with you. Honestly, I think I would suggest that you focus on some physical activity. That's where I would start. Do that first, then get on to managing the stress related to the turmoil, if you have any. But I have found when I'm under stress, the thing that helps me center myself and think is physical activity so I would maybe consider starting there. But you can choose between those things.

BONUS

Now it's time to continue with today's mission from Zigmund Canceller from World War II. Let me get to the page, we were on 37 last week, weren't we? Yeah, he was in Italy last week. Oh, this one's a longer one. Let's see what happened here. We were in the doldrums. This one definitely isn't dull.

“Mission number 38 and 39, August 27th. Ship number 274, sortie 25th back to dear old Dutch land today to Blockenheimer, Germany. Flak worse than at Plasti. Engine got hit but got back safely. Lucky again. Formation was all fumbled up and some planes didn't drop their bombs. So, we proceeded to Hungary and got rid of them there. Imagine that. I got these bombs. We got to get rid of them somewhere. Encountered flak there. Escorts were 51’s and 38s’, carried 12500 pound bombs. Mission was 9 hours 15 minutes. Altitude was 62,200 ft. Few planes lost PS crew, tail gunner and bear and lower ball finished up their mission 50 today. Hope we will be able to finish safely.”

The opinions voice in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All, performance reference is historical and does not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal, tax or financial advisor before making any decisions.